Eskom has warned of a huge fall in its generation capacity after several old and outdated power stations were decommissioned.
Eskom’s management gave an update on the utility’s operations on Thursday.
Andre de Ruyter explained that if Eskom fails in fixing the old power station’s problems, it would become a strategic risk to the country.
He indicated that several power stations had reached the end of their design life.
Altogether, this means that considerable generating capacity would have to be shed.
In other words, the risk of load shedding is inevitable.
“We will therefore take out of commission over the next 10 years, between 8,000 to 12,000 megawatts of capacity and that will obviously create a short fall for generation capacity, going forward.”
But de Ruyter however drew attention to the light at end of the tunnel as he was pleased with the procurement of 11,000 megawatts to the power system.
He said this will hopefully eradicate the load shedding plan.
“The looming shortfall from a generational capacity that we’re very grateful for is Nersa’s concurrence with Minister Mantashe’s determination of a procurement process to add 11.8 GW to the grid. We think that this is urgent.”
